Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘Barrage fire,’ said Süßmann in Bertin’s ear. ‘It’s just for show to fool the Frogs.’

From the way the two Saxons had pressed themselves into the ground, Bertin could tell that they were frightened too – the guns often shot too short. What if the diversion worked and the French replied? It did work. Flashing and roaring ahead, with blinding light from the sides. Men in artillery caps appeared from the dugout with an aiming circle. Under the protection of the mine throwers’ screen, they sighted the flashes from the French guns and shouted figures to one another. Bertin wondered how long this terrible din would last, the explosions, flames, flickers, howling and droning in the starlit night. He couldn’t stand it. There was a thunderous ringing his ears, and the once repellent dugout now seemed like a refuge. He stumbled down the stairs, pushed aside a tarpaulin and saw brightness and men sitting and lying on wire grating, their weapons to hand beside them. A stearin cartridge on a box cast a thin glow, and the air underground was thick and smoky. The faces of the sappers, gunners and Saxon riflemen made him feel almost sick. Until now he had garlanded them with splendid delusions, draped them in noble titles. But no illusion could hold out here. The men in this boarded clay grave were just lost battalions, the sacrificed herds of world markets, which were currently experiencing a glut in human material. Crouched on a plank under the earth 200m from the enemy and yawning suddenly from exhaustion, he saw that even here the men were just doing their duty – nothing more than that.

The earth rumbled above him, chunks fell from the walls, dust rained down from the timbers and as the infantrymen calmly carried on smoking their cigarettes, he wondered hesitantly how he had come to see this truth. It hurt! It robbed you of the strength to endure life. Surely it couldn’t be the same everywhere else as in his own company. He must tell Kroysing about it. Was that Kroysing coming through the door? Yes, there was young Kroysing in his sergeant’s cap, smiling engagingly. Things were pretty jolly in the cellars at Chambrettes-Ferme. The sausage machines were rattling away and guts were being stretched for sausage skins, and on the door hung the new regulation about using human flesh, grey human flesh…

Sergeant Süßmann looked at Private Bertin’s face both in amusement and complete sympathy. He’d fallen abruptly asleep and his steel helmet had fallen from his head. Süßmann took Bertin’s hand and moved it to and fro, establishing that the boy had come through it all fine.

‘The relief of the battalion took place one and a half hours ahead of schedule. Nothing to report.’

AROUND 11PM, SÜSSMANN woke Bertin in darkness; the candle had burnt down and gone out. He’d been dreaming about an incredibly violent storm on Lake Ammer. Lightning seemed to whip up the expanse of water, and thunder echoed off the mountain walls against underwater banks.

‘Up you get,’ said Süßmann. ‘Big fireworks display. It’s worth a look.’

Bertin knew immediately where he was. His head hurt, but it would clear in the open air. Outside, the trench was full of men, all looking behind them. A roar like an organ playing filled the night with thunderous tones. Flames sprang up over the neighbouring sector. Fiery discharges rained down, methodically spread out across the approach routes and familiar hills and valleys. As the shells hit, they hurled up fiery gasses and earth in cloud-like columns. The howl as they approached, the pounding tide of vicious hissing, the ringing, rattling and manic cracking, made Bertin’s heart tremble, but he also pressed Süßmann’s arm in fascination as the full force of the human drive to destroy was unleashed – rejoicing in evil’s omnipotence.

A thin, bespectacled Saxon sergeant standing next to Bertin surprised him by calmly observing: ‘That’s what we can do, bastards that we may be.’

As Bertin looked at the man’s stubbly face under his helmet, his narrow cheekbones and shrewd eyes, and the two ribbons, black and white and green and white, in his top buttonhole, he felt a surge of pride and admiration for his comrades, these German soldiers with their sense of duty, their hopelessness, their grim courage. They’d seen it all.

Luckily, the first battalion was to get off lightly this time. It would all be over in 10 minutes, Süßmann shouted in his ear. Then, Bertin knew, the German artillery would take its turn, and this squaring of accounts would create more destruction – a new day of anti-creation.

In the meantime, the young Saxon calmly lit his pipe, and a couple of others shared his lighter. The wild noise gradually petered out. They could hear one another again. It was only above the Adalbert line that shrapnel was still exploding. That’s where the long 10cm guns were, said the Saxon. They’d obviously received a big batch of ammunition and were now getting rid of it. Of course, his neighbour confirmed. Otherwise, they’d have to take it back home if peace broke out that day. The young sergeant pooh-poohed this. Peace wouldn’t break out that quickly. Plenty of time to pour a few more pots of coffee before that happened. There were many more medals to be pocketed and bestowed before peace could be allowed to break out.

‘Of course, it’s not just medals,’ said the neighbour. Bertin listened up. These men were talking like Pahl, like the inn-keeper Lebehde, Halezinsky the gas worker and little Vehse from Hamburg. In the pallid darkness that had once more descended, their faces shimmered like masks under the sharp edges of their helmets.

The men who were still on duty looked ahead again, while the others began to vanish into the dugouts. The bespectacled Saxon had just expressed his amazement at Bertin’s cap and was asking what kinds of folks Süßmann and his lieutenant had brought to the front, when Father Lochner’s substantial shoulders came into view, topped by Kroysing’s tall form. Süßmann quickly kicked the Saxon in the shin, and he got the message equally quickly. ‘I’m a theology student too and I’ve never been out of Halle in my life,’ he said.

‘A colleague?’ asked the chaplain innocently.

‘Yes, Pastor, sir!’ replied the sergeant, standing to attention. Bertin bit back a grin. ‘Sir’ and ‘pastor’ didn’t go together.

Father Lochner didn’t notice. He wanted to be kind to the young man. ‘The hand of our Lord God will continue to protect you,’ he said and made to move on.

But in his polite voice and as if agreeing with the priest, the young theologian replied, ‘I almost believe that myself. Nothing will happen to us for the time being. The likes of us get killed on the morning of the armistice.’

Lochner twitched, said nothing and tried to move on. The Saxons nudged one another. As they moved on, Kroysing spoke into his companion’s ear, asking him if this sample of sentiment at the front was enough for him and if he’d like to head for home.

‘Ten minutes and a schnapps,’ the priest requested.

Kroysing was happy to oblige. ‘When will you speak to Herr Niggl?’ he asked casually as he unhooked his canteen.

Lochner’s face took on an imploring look. ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ he promised. ‘As soon as I get back.’

Kroysing’s head revolved on his long neck like a lighthouse. He was looking for Bertin. ‘I want to gather in my chicks,’ he explained.

Sergeant Süßmann cocked his thumb Bertin’s direction. ‘He’s studying no man’s land.’

Bertin had forced his head into a gap in the screen above the mine throwers. Hands cupping his eyes, he peered into the night at the glinting barbed wire entanglements. The reflection from the explosions no longer blinded him. Far back to the right, German shells were now bursting. Something formless menaced in the distance, something dark, strange and fascinating. And he remembered a school excursion he’d gone on one morning as a 13-year-old to Three Emperors’ Corner, where the German Kaiser’s Reich met those of the Austrians and the Tsars behind the town of Myslowitz. The greenish waters of a stream called the Przemsa snaked between them. Nothing distinguished one bank of the stream from the other: flat green land, a railway bridge, a sandy path, and in the distance a wood. Only the uniform of the border Cossack was different from that of the German customs guard. But the young schoolboy had nonetheless sensed the foreign on the other side of the stream, another country both threatening and fascinating, where the language was unintelligible, the customs different and the people uneducated, perhaps even dangerous. Borders, thought Bertin. Borders! What tales we’ve been told! What had that clever Saxon said when the French were shooting? ‘Bastards that we may be.’ We: that’s what it was all about. Who had held his canteen to a Frenchman’s thirsty lips? And now this…? There was no hope of getting to the truth.